The Darkest Prelude
by Exileian
Summary: When a legend begins, it always started somewhere else.


The Darkest Prelude

By Sakki

He remembered that there had once been a palace, shining high above the city. She remembered a tower in the middle of a glowing metropolis, a beacon of light to those lost in the darkness. They both remembered that it was their home, their ancestral castle in the sky, the place where generations before and generations to come were born and raised in.

Now, it was no longer theirs.

To be fair, it was technically still _theirs._ The lands had still homed their ancestors, and the palace still held their ancient seals and secrets. But they no longer lived in it, and their children would never again set foot beyond its walls knowing that it was _their _home.

Now, to her, it looked like a tower of spines. He didn't see it again after that day, except in dreams. They both wished they could stand in it again, feel the swaying sturdiness under their feet, but they knew it was impossible. There was no returning to their home. New places would take its place, new places far away from each other.

Away from each other.

After that day, they never saw each other again.

.-.-

The streets of Haven City were empty, with only the sound of the wind and the engines at the coliseum to create any ambience. New rules had been instated; one of them was a sort of curfew. People caught outside their homes after a certain time had to prove they were going somewhere and get one of the Krimzon Guard to escort them, or risk arrest. This had led to much law-breaking and general chaos, but for now, the streets were relatively peaceful.

Under the streetlights, a figure stirred.

Wrapped in tattered blankets, a lithe young woman stole out from an alley and dashed across the street. She glanced both ways as soon as she was hidden, looking for patrols that might see her and demand identification.

There was silence and stillness.

With a sigh, she pulled down the blanket that covered most of her head. She was safe, for the moment. She checked the streets again for any sign of guard patrols before leaving the darkness of the doorway she'd darted into.

It was only five houses away. If she walked calmly and slowly, she could hear the patrols and hide with well enough time before they passed. There was no need to panic, no need to worry. No need for such a thing at all.

Just five houses away.

Calmly, carefully, she walked barefoot down the dirt-covered streets, her head held up straight and her gaze pointed forward. Anyone catching a casual glance of her might think she was on her way home from something exciting enough to have made her lose her shoes, or that she was the still-shocked victim of a crime heading for the nearest guard station.

Perhaps the latter was true, but she was not headed for a guard station.

Four houses away. Because this neighborhood had been built with efficiency in mind, the area had quickly degenerated into a slum despite the best efforts of the leaders of Haven City. Even before the pollution had set in, it looked bad: houses crammed together into circular blocks, dirt-paved streets with holes in the ground for easy access to the water pipes, rickety stick-bridges leading from place to place... It had been a bad idea that only got worse as time went on.

Three houses away.

To distract herself from the pounding of her heart, the young woman began to hum, and as she did, she rubbed her stomach. It protruded from her body in a way that would be entirely unnatural were it not for the miracle of life. The girl was very obviously pregnant.

The song was one from her childhood, and from her mother's childhood, and her grandmother's, and her great-grandmother's, and so on for countless generations. It was one of those simple melodies that's easy to remember, but the words always elude you when you really want them. She did not want to remember them, so they came to her, and she almost cursed them out of her mind.

Two houses. So close, so close, so close and so far away from everything.

She continued humming and looked up at the sky, where the stars glittered at her from their great blue-black backdrop. After a certain point, the glaring light of the great tower-palace blocked them from view. Her eyes locked on the silver-gray steel top and followed the powerful wires to their spiked bases.

Memories floated before her eyes, memories that she both embraced and hid from. Memories from the inside of that place, never from the outside.

Just one house now.

Suddenly, there was a noise. Or rather, many noises.

Footsteps. A low hum.

She stopped in her tracks and pulled the tattered blanket back up over her head. There were no alleys nearby, but there was a pile of garbage. She stared at it and grimaced. A pile of garbage, or...

With surprising speed for a pregnant woman, she slipped into the pile and covered most of her body with refuse. The blankets stuck out in some places, but that may have helped; it appeared that there was an old, disgusting piece of cloth thrown out with the rest.

The footsteps came closer, closer, ever closer, and were soon right next to her. Voices, muffled by the sound of the hovercraft, floated by her. They were calm discussions, men talking back and forth about simple things. They never even bothered to look at the trash pile.

When the sounds had faded enough for her to feel comfortable, she slowly removed herself from the garbage. One footstep beyond it, and she felt a sudden squish under her heel.

She grimaced, lifted her foot, and attempted to continue on to the one doorway she was looking for.

There it was.

Slowly, she approached the door and knocked once, twice, three, four times.

Nobody came to the door.

Then:

"Who is it?"

A gruff voice, yet one full of a sort of warmth that made the woman relax.

"Samos, it's me."

Clicks as locks were undone echoed through the streets, and the door was pulled open almost viciously. A short man with large green-and-white hair looked up at her and sighed with obvious relief.

"Hara. You've had me worried! Come inside, come inside!" He ushered her in, and she passed through the doorway. The blanket over her head dropped to her shoulders, and she shook out her hair, long and dirty blonde.

"Thank you, Samos. I'm sorry I was gone for so long."

"You need to keep track of the time, my girl. Now go get some rest. You need it far more than usual."

"Of course." The woman smiled and moved into another room, where a few people lay on beds, fast asleep. She walked over to an empty one and lay down, and within moments she was fast asleep, her hands clasped to her swollen belly.

.-.-

There was golden light. Bright, blazing, shining golden light. And it was everywhere.

He had been traveling for too long in the land of burning gold, or so he thought.

Above him were blue skies, so blue they were stark and unbearable, and around him were the occasional darker gold-brown outcroppings known as mountains along with some faded, pale green cactuses.

But it was still gold everywhere.

Oh, and there was no water. Had he mentioned that? The last oasis he'd come upon was three days ago, and his only canteen was dangerously low. He thanked the Precursors that he'd gone on hundreds of excursions of the Wasteland during his younger days.

His younger days...

He shook his head. No. He would not think of that now, not after he'd finally managed to put it out of his mind in favor of survival. There would be time to think later. For now, he had concentrate on not dying out here in the flat, endless gold of the Wasteland.

But how was he going to do...that?

There was so much sand, and so little him.

The nights had been unbearably cold. The days had been unbearably hot. Over and over again, it was the same thing every moment with the same scenery and the same everything. Oases were a tiny distraction in the continued cycle of nothing. He remembered that she'd once made a comparison of normal life to that, how their time together was - No. Survival, survival is the key.

He stared up at the sky, at the empty, endless sky, and wondered if there was any chance of finding that key.

Slowly, he shut his eyes and let himself sink down into the shade of a large rocky outcropping. It wasn't much relief, but it was enough to let him consider his options.

The next oasis wasn't for at least another day or two. He had enough water to last maybe one day. His skin was sore and sunburned to the point where it was peeling and bleeding. He was badly dehydrated. There was no sign of anyone else out here, or anything.

Nothing but sand and cacti and rocks.

This place was to be his grave.

Despite everything he'd told himself, he began to doubt that he was ever going to find a way back to Haven City alive. Maybe someone would come out one day and find his corpse, but that wasn't very reassuring. He would die out here, alone and unsaved, with only memories to make him - No.

He covered his eyes with one hand and forced back what he swore were tears.

Maybe...he could rest. Just for now. It was cooler at night, anyway, and he could probably get farther then. So for now he could...sleep.

Before he did so, he reached into one of his pockets and pressed the center of a small metal disc. It flashed a few times, beeped once, and fell silent. He closed his hand around it to assure himself of its existence.

And then, he fell unconscious.

In the blazing heat of the Wasteland sun, shadows moved across the dunes, following the siren call of a Precursor beacon.


End file.
